Film series will show ‘Lars and the Real Girl’
KINGSTON, N.Y. » The tender, offbeat comedy-drama “Lars and the Real Girl,” an emotionally invested movie about loneliness and the lingering scars of early trauma, will be shown as part of the Movies With Spirit Series on Saturday, April 21, at 7 p.m. at Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church, 22 Livingston St.
The film centers on Lars Lindstrom (played by Ryan Gosling), a painfully shy 27-year-old man in Wisconsin who can barely stand the touch of another human being. He functions in the world and has an office job, but in the evening he sits alone in a garage apartment in the backyard of his family home. His mother died years ago, his depressive father more recently. The family home is now occupied by his older brother Gus (Paul Schneider) and pregnant sister-in-law Karin (Emily Mortimer).
Karin’s pregnancy awakens a deep-seated fear of abandonment in Lars, which he expresses in the unexpected appearance of a girlfriend, whom he wants Gus and Karin to meet. He introduces her as Bianca. He explains she’s a paraplegic Brazilian-Danish missionary on sabbatical to experience the world. She also happens to be a custommade, life-size plastic sex doll Lars ordered from an adult website.
Gus and Karin are stunned. Lars treats her as if she is alive. He takes her everywhere in a wheelchair. And he has an explanation for everything about her, including why she doesn’t talk or eat.
Gus and Karin arrange for Lars and Bianca to see a psychiatrist, Dr. Dagmar Berman (Patricia Clarkson). Dagmar “diagnoses” Bianca with low blood pressure and advises Lars to bring her in for weekly treatments. Her aim is to have regular contact with Lars, hoping to get to the root of his behavior.
She later explains to Gus and Karin that Lars’ delusion is a manifestation of an underlying problem that needs to be addressed. She urges them to assist with his therapy by considering Bianca a real person. Eventually, everyone in town goes along with it.
The 2007 film runs 106 minutes minutes and is rated PG-13. The screening will be followed by a facilitated discussion. Refreshments will be served. Attendees over age 12 are asked to contribute $5 to $10 a person.
The monthly Movies With Spirit series, organized by Gerry Harrington of Kingston, seeks to stimulate people’s sense of joy and wonder, inspire love and compassion, evoke a deepened understanding of people’s integral connection with others and with life itself, and support individual cultures, faith paths and beliefs while simultaneously transcending them. The films are screened in diverse houses of worship and reverence across Ulster and Dutchess counties at 7 p.m. on the third Saturday of every month. The series has no religious affiliation.
For more information about “Lars and the Real Girl” and the rest of the series, call Harrington at (845) 389-9201 or sned an email to gerryharrington@mindspring.com. Details are also available at movieswithspirit.com and facebook.com/MoviesWithSpirit.